


Counting Days

by Butterfly



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-24
Updated: 2004-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:21:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfly/pseuds/Butterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack hadn't ever wondered what it had been like to be Sara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Days

**Author's Note:**

> **Timeline:** Set during S8's _Icon_.

The milk in Daniel's fridge had turned sour yesterday.

So here Jack was, boring himself silly at a grocery store, buying milk that he wouldn't be drinking for a guy who hadn't even had the courtesy to call to say when he'd be coming home.

He'd never figured himself for an officer's wife. He wasn't really sure that he had the constitution. He'd never wondered what life had been like for Sara when he was on a mission, because thinking that way just led to inaccuracy in the field.

Worry wasn't really an _effective_ battle technique.

But nothing he could do was, not today and not tomorrow. All he could do was wait. Wait and hope that Carter would find Daniel's signal, somewhere in that mess of noise. Wait and see if that religious fruitcake would relax his hold and at least let them look.

So he didn't have to wonder anymore what Sara might have felt, because now he was the one living it. Somehow, it was never Daniel waiting at home for some word, some sign, some fucking hope. No, it was Brigadier General Jack O'Neill, the damn fool who kept saying 'yes'. Yes, Daniel, you can stay on Abydos with your new wife. Yes, Daniel, you can explore the universe as an incorporeal being. Yes, Daniel, you can go back to a world about to erupt into a civil war. Sure, why not? It isn't as though you might be needed here.

It isn't as though you'd be leaving anyone behind.

Sometimes, like now, when he has to remember if Daniel drinks two percent or whole milk, Jack lets himself wonder at his own utter stupidity. With Sara, they'd needed a contract and a life to tie them together. He still loved her like all hell, always would, but he hadn't shared with her. She'd been Sara and he'd been Jack. Two different people who'd loved each other and what they'd created together.

But then Daniel just was, and Jack found himself lost, sense of direction shot all to hell as he tried to make sense of terrain that had never been mapped. That maybe _couldn't_ be mapped. His mouth opened and words slipped out, and it was only afterwards that he ever realized how much he was giving away. He'd given away so many pieces of himself to Daniel that he didn't fit together anymore when Daniel was gone.

And that was a dangerous position to be in, especially over someone in your command. And Daniel was in his command, at least theoretically, but when it came to Daniel, he'd been hopelessly compromised years ago. Long before he'd let himself admit anything more, he'd already known that Daniel was a weak point. Daniel's voice had made him live and even as early as Daniel's first death, he'd known that losing Daniel meant losing that spark all over again.

He'd fought against it, tried so hard to escape it, but when he was always the one left behind as Daniel raced forward, Jack had known that he was doomed. On Abydos, Jack had been willing, no, eager to give his life away. Daniel had saved it; he'd picked it up, brushed it off, and then tucked it away in his back pocket.

The years had passed and Daniel had kept carrying Jack's life for him. Whenever Daniel'd left, Jack had felt a gaping hole and it hadn't been missing his best friend, it'd been missing himself. Daniel died and in each death, Jack waited to get his life back. And over and over, Daniel would return, pulling Jack's life out from his pocket to prove that he still owned it.

So here Jack was, buying two kinds of milk.

And he didn't know how many more times he could stand in this aisle, but he knew that he would keep doing this until Daniel came home.

It was what made Daniel come back, having a place to come to, and Jack was content enough to leave it that way. Keeping up Daniel's life in exchange for his own was more than a fair bargain.

Because Daniel always came back. It was just a matter of when.

  
_the end_   



End file.
